From the Globe and Mail:
Bell Canada is trying to determine just who has seen a limited amount personal information on some 3.4 million of its clients in Quebec and Ontario after a Montreal man was arrested Tuesday and faces charges of stealing the data.
The telecommunications company said Tuesday it had recovered the stolen data at a Montreal home but that it was fairly limited and only included names, addresses, telephone numbers and a list of Bell services the client subscribed to.
The company assured its customers that no financial or security information was stolen.
“No information relating to personal identification numbers, customer credit, credit card numbers, reference checks, billing or long-distance calling details were included in the stolen material,†company spokesman Mark Langton confirmed.
“There was no identity material beyond name, address and phone number,†Langton added. “(The information is) similar to what you’d find in the white pages or a phone directory.â€
Name, address and phone number are a helluva good starting point for a identity thief. More importantly if the was able to get away with this much data are there other incidents that we have yet to hear of? After all, this wasn’t made public until after an arrest was made.
[tags]Data Loss, Data Theft, Privacy, Identity Theft[/tags]
Name, Address, and Phone number. Yes, a good starting point for identity theft. However, what about the telephone book. Lots of good records there, whitepages, etc.
While the fact the Telecom withheld information of the theft is bad, the information they currently clam was accessible was just a bit more than what you find in any public telephone directory.
Now, that *assumes* that the Telco has not withheld if the data (or other data) on the system held more compromising information.
@Eric
Fair point. I was leaning more to the idea that the info, while available via the phone book also points to the fact they are Bell customers. A tidy dollar could be made on cloning phones or something to that end.
thanks for the comment.